COVID incubation is getting shorter with each new variant, reveals study

The incubation period for a virus helps public health experts and the government to determine isolation period and other factors.

Moneycontrol News

August 25, 2022 / 14:47 IST

Representative Image (Image: Reuters)

Coronavirus incubation or the time taken for symptoms to show up is getting shorter with each new variant, revealed a new study reported by Bloomberg.

The study published in the journal JAMA Network Open had scientists from Beijing's Peking University and Tsinghua University following over 140 candidates infected with different COVID variants.

Also Read: COVID-19 infectiousness lasts more than 5 days, UK study finds

It was also noted that incubation can vary across different age groups and so can the severity of the disease. The scientists found that COVID incubation fell from an average of five days for an Alpha infection to 3.42 days for Omicron.

Typically, the incubation for COVID is longer than other respiratory viral infections such as respiratory syncytial virus, influenza, and rhinovirus.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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